Six Years Later
by Marcy Bayd
Summary: six years after the band formed dewey wants nothing to do with them, and the 'teens' barely remember each other and are struggling to keep their sanity. FK, ZS, but ships might change...
1. prologue thingy!

**FULL SUMMARY:** Two months after the SoR almost won the Battle of the Bands, Dewey Finn is arrested for some crime or another, unknown to the band. When he returns he wants nothing to do with the band or the outside world, for one reason or another. The band breaks up and goes through Middle School barely recognizing each other. When they are reunited in highschool they still barely talk, but once they reach their junior year, things start to happen. Old friendships are made as are problems.

**A/N:** Don't know what'll happen, I'll update as I write... give me suggestions and other stuff, and I might actually write accordingly... Reviews are GREATLY appreciated and wanted. If at least three people don't review the first chapter, I won't continue... sorry for the greediness...

**Marcy Bayd XD**

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"And if you wanna be the teacher's pet..." Summer Hathaway sang softly... "Well, baby, you just better forget it..." She sat on her toilet staring at the wall in front of her. "Rock got no reason, rock got no rhyme—you better get me to school on time..." She drew in a painful breath and let it out shakily. The little nightlight that was plugged into the electric socket above the sink shone a sea-green light over the small bathroom.

"Summer?" Her mother's voice called through the mansion.

Her head jerked and her gaze faced the doorway. She squinted her eyes through the darkness and was relieved to see she had locked the door.

"Summer, telephone!" Her mother called a bit louder and a lot closer.

Summer gasped through a mucous filled nose and wiped the tears trickling from her hazel eyes. She groped around on the counter next to her and grasped a small Swiss Army Pocket Knife.

"Summer Hathaway, it's for you!" Mrs. Hathaway shouted in exasperation and began walking up the grand staircase in the center of the household.

Summer bit her lip to keep from crying more, but the tears were so strong that she had to bite till she bled to keep them back.

"Summer!" She almost was shrieking at that point. "Summer, it's Mr. Mooneyham!"

Summer sighed and got up and slowly walked into her room. She slid belly down on her bed and picked up the phone on the other side. "Hello?" She said a bit happier than before.

Her mother hung up.

"Hey, Sum, it's Zack," He said informatively.

She smiled meekly on her line, glad to be talking to her all time secret crush, "I know."

"Well," He said, "I just wanted to know if we had any math due tomorrow?"

Her face darkened and she drew the blade from the pocket knife. "No." She said simply and hung up. She picked up the phone and dialed 911. She shifted her gaze to make sure the door was closed. It was.

Someone answered the other line and said a few things. Summer paused and then responded. "I'd like to report the murder of Summer Hathaway. 123 Main St." She hung up, threw the phone across the room and plunged the knife into her chest.

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R&R... tell me what u like/don't like... any suggestions, guesses, anything, just tell me what ya think! I kno what's gonna happen... u don't... and if ya wanna kno, u better review!!!

lol... ;-)


	2. chapter one

**To my reviewers:**

**KAthryn MErlin:** what's up with u lately?!!!! y r u acting like such a b-tch to me lately????

**UrS0D00rk3y: **c, i like to leave ya'll stunned/confused/anything-else, so ya'll come back!

**I am the American Idiot: **dude how many times have u changed ur name???? I'm getting confused!!! but i like ur name now... anyways,      thanx!!! lol...

**Bchgrl04: **thanx for the review... i couldn't find ur email so can u email me???

**maroonedpirate11: **don't worry... i was thinking about it, but then i felt that it would b a better story if i had her live and add to the drama! mwa ha ha!

**desiree: **thanx!

To e'rbody: wow! i didn't kno ya'll'd like it that much! i got like 6 reviews! u guyz rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

o and I forgot to add a disclaimer last time so here it goes:

**Disclaimer: **i obviouisly don't own SoR....

* * *

At eight o clock Thursday night, Summer Hathaway killed herself. At eight o five she was brought back by some paramedics, and by nine o clock the next day, half the eleventh grade was informed of her stunt.................................................................

Freddy Jones was sitting on his swivel chair instant messaging his only old School of Rock friend, Zack Mooneyham.

**SpazzyFreddy666: **Did we have any math hw???

**ZackAttack7: **Hold on... I'm calling sum...

**ZackAttack7: **.........................................

**SpazzyFreddy666: **so????

**ZackAttack7: **whoa! The phone just like exploded!

**SpazzyFreddy666: **COOL!!!!

**ZackAttack7: **not mine, hers................

**ZackAttack7: **look out your window, is she still in her room?

Freddy pushed the chair away from his desk and swirled across the room to the window. He pushed the drapes aside and peered across the street at the Hathaways' home. Her room was pitch black.

**SpazzyFreddy666: **???

**SpazzyFreddy666: **I guess she's not there...

**ZackAttack7: **I was just talking to her???

Freddy looked back out the window and shrugged.

**SpazzyFreddy666: **??? the lights are all out...

**ZackAttack7: **I'll try calling Emily...

**ZackAttack7: **she always knos the hw...... hold on....

**SpazzyFreddy666: **holy crap!

**Auto-Away message from ZackAttack7:** Hold on.... I'll brb....

Freddy sighed and rushed over to the window. With every breath he took, a small puff of fog was left on the glass. His computer made a noise, and he looked over to see that Zack had IMed him.

**ZackAttack7: **huh???????????????

**SpazzyFreddy666: **There's like 5 billion ambulances and pig cars in front of her house!!!!

**ZackAttack7: **well go out there and find out what's goin on!

A sheepish grin formed on Freddy's face.

**SpazzyFreddy666: **y??? u worried about her???????

**SpazzyFreddy666: **oooooooohhhh.... :-

**ZackAttack7: **what u don't wanna here what em said????

**ZackAttack7: **hello?????

**ZackAttack7: **dude?????????????????????

Freddy was already out his door by the time Zack gave up on IMing him. Across the street was a cluster of neighbors and officials. He squished his way through until he saw her.

His face paled considerably, and for a moment he thought he was just seeing things. He brushed his shaggy blonde hair from his chocolate brown eyes and looked again. His stomach tightened and his eyes widened.

There was Summer Hathaway lying on a stretcher with an oxygen tank pumping air into her. Her clothes were ripped mostly all off, and what remained was stained with blood. He scanned the rest of her over and saw a small pocket knife protruding from her right rib. Mary Anne, Summer's mother, was shrieking and sobbing. Her normally white face was a considerable ten shades lighter and her hands were shaking. Mr. Hathaway followed his daughter silently, and solemnly. He looked like the walking dead, still in shock.

Freddy stood there dumbstruck until the mob of people slowly dwindled away. He was the last one standing there, just staring at where the remaining truck was parked. A couple of men came from the house a few moments later with various baggies of evidence. Freddy asked through chapped lips, "What happened?"

The man, who looked in charge, wove his hand indicating he wouldn't answer his question.

Freddy shrugged and slowly sauntered back to his house, and up to his room. As he locked the door he noticed a message waiting for him on his computer screen. He sighed and sat back down.

**PoshKate13: **it's Katie....

**PoshKate13: **remember? From the bassist....

**PoshKate13: **we used to fite bout any drummer vs. u...

**PoshKate13: **ya there?????

He smiled and replied...

**SpazzyFreddy666: **ya, I 4got to 2 put my away mess on

**PoshKate13: **ya, well I just wanted to ask if we had math hw...

Freddy started to laugh uncontrollably. Maybe from humor, or maybe he was simply nervous, just trying to life his spirits, but he was nonetheless laughing like a mad man.

**SpazzyFreddy666:** lmao!!! :)

**PoshKate13: **????

**SpazzyFreddy666: **nm

**PoshKate13: **do we or not??????? >o

**SpazzyFreddy666: **I dunno...

**PoshKAte13: **thanx 4 nothin!

**SpazzyFreddy666: **u imed me!

**Auto-Away Message from PoshKate13: **get lost!

Freddy sighed and signed off. He looked around and found the phone. He dialed Zack's number and waited for an answer.

"Hello," Zack yawned on his end.

"Hey," Freddy said cautiously, not knowing how to tell Zack about Summer. He didn't care either way about Hathaway. They had never been close, even though they were neighbors. But he knew Zack really liked her... and was stalking her in tenth grade for half the year until Freddy found out and ragged on him. "Dude, are you sitting?"

Zack paused a moment to think of an answer, "Yes..." he said in a strange tone that Freddy rarely heard from his friend.

"K..." He didn't know how to break it to him. "Come over to my house?"

Zack paused even longer for that one, "Why?"

"Just come over, dude!" Freddy ordered vaguely and hung up.

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A/N: i felt i should update and let ya'll get a bit more. ya'll were gr8! thanx again for the reivews, but lemme remind u... if i don't get somemore reviews, i won't be updating....

MArcy XD


	3. chapter two

--disclaimer: i don't own the beach boy song, fun fun fun, or any of the other songs!

**Cinamon Angel:** I 4got to mention u in my last chap... thanx for the critique... always accepted! and this chap is pretty long.......... (sorry if i spelled ur name wrong... ;-)  
**Kathryn Merlin:** thanx for explaining... :)  
**and everybody else...... **u guys rock! thanx for all the compliments, and other stuff like that! mwah!

* * *

Zack rubbed his eyes and climbed down from his desk/bunk-bed. The computer flashed various photos as the screensaver. He stood staring at it for a moment, watching his siblings, parents, and various past girlfriends fade in and out on the monitor. As soon as the slideshow completed he grabbed a jacket and his car keys and made his way out to his car.

He fumbled around with his keys and started up the engine, and immediately turned the heater on. Warm air slowly blew onto his face and he felt ready to go. After he safely got onto the main street he turned the radio onto the news channel, since he had to take the freeway to get to Freddy's place and didn't feel like sitting in traffic for three hours.

Mr. Bill Dalloway of KCAL 8 droned the traffic updates announcing that the 10 was jam packed, and that he'd take the side streets if he was the listeners. Zack sighed and switched the channel to his favorite station, FM 106.7.

Marilyn Manson's song, _Personal Jesus, _was playing. Zack sighed. No one else he knew really liked this song the way he did. Most of his friends found Manson to be satanic and 'scary'. Not Zack, he liked most of his music. He probably was the only one in Horace High that did, so he kept his mouth shut, so no one would look at him weird as he walked through the halls. The only 'rock' that was 'accepted' in his school was classic rock, and some losers AKA posers thought Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson were rock stars. Zack knew better than that, and only he and Freddy, as far as he knew, could see past crap like that.

The song ended and went to the new Greenday song, _American Idiot. _

Zack smiled. He liked this song, too, and so far he was having a pretty damn good night. No homework, and he was about to go over to his best friend's house. _Fun, fun, fun til her daddy takes the T-bird away…_ Zack sang in his head.

He turned onto another main street as a short blurb of news update came up. "Blah, blah, blah… President Bush, Blahdy, blahdy, blah… War on Terror… blah, traffic on the 10, 7 and 405… yada, yada, yada… local teenager, Summer…"

Zack perked his head up and turned the volume up.

"…away, daughter of millionaires Mary Anne Lennon and Robert Joseph Hathaway, has recently been found to have attempted suicide. The girl's parents confirm that she did it just for attention, and that she'll be getting help if, God willing, she survives…… blah, blah, blah… The city's oldest citizen… yada, blah, die… blah!!!…"

Zack's face paled, his hands moistened, and his breaths came in short and sharp. Each more painful than the last. Slowly he made up his mind, and he pulled the car over to the curb and turned the engine off.

His head throbbed. He had just spoken to her no more then half an hour ago and already it was on the news. _Did Freddy know? He probably did, _Zack presumed_, since he wanted me to come over. Why would she do that?_ A car zoomed past and started honking at him.

He turned around in his seat and noticed a long line of cars stopped behind him

"Shit," He muttered and realized that he couldn't pull over on that street, and that the curb was just another lane. He shoved his key back into the ignition and continued to drive, only to receive more honks and fingers.

"Same to you!" He shouted out his window and sped the rest of the journey.

Freddy Jones was sitting on his bed twiddling his thumbs, thinking of ways to break the news to Zack. Subtly, straight forwardly, bluntly, or not at all. He pondered over his options. None looked to good to him. All of them would be hard and Freddy Jones was not a guy who liked to take the road less traveled. He preferred the effortless and easy short sidewalk instead, complete with nice shady trees and even cement, perfect for boarding down. But he knew that this was not an easy thing, and he was going to have to do it in the most sensible fashion EVER. This was Zack after all, his only friend and partner in crime.

Ha! Freddy started to chuckle. Sure he and Zack were friends, but Zack was to, well, sane, to do any of the stupid stunts that Freddy dared do. And sure they were best friends, but Zack had others, fall backs if Freddy failed him or something, but Freddy didn't. No one liked him. They thought he was 'weird' and a 'punk'. Freddy laughed at those losers, but would still feel some small pain at the back of his chest for not being accepted for sticking up what he believed in. But he wouldn't trade his lifestyle for anything, nope, natta, ZIP!

After a few moments of unconscious day dreaming, he jolted back into reality and was a bit freaked out by the silence of his room. He rolled onto his stomach and then peered over the side of his bed. He found what he was looking for and reached under his bed and pulled out a box labeled: Freddy's crap.

He looked around, suspiciously, and then took a key off a necklace he was wearing and unlocked the small lock holding the box closed. The lock gave and released the metal bar, letting Freddy take the lid off it. He checked the door, once more, and dumped the contents of the box on his bed.

CD's, tens of hundreds of thousands of CD's, poured out, most without CD covers/cases. Half of them were downloaded, the other half were burned and the other, other half he bought in secret, when he had gathered enough allowance to do so. Even though he was a junior, he was too lazy to get a job, and his parents hated to give him money for no good reason. He dug through the mountain of disks and grabbed a stack of at least twenty. He flipped through them; Blink 182, Sum 41, Thrice, Casualties, Misfits, Thrice, Nirvana, Slipknot, etc. He picked out Sum 41 _Does this Look Infected, _and popped it into his walkman.

The music was dumped and forced into his ears and into his brain, throwing him into a state of pleasure. _Real music, _he thought relieved and cranked dup the volume until he couldn't hear anything else. _Better than the shit ma makes me listen to._

"_Everybody's got their problems  
Everybody says the same thing to you  
It's just a matter how you solve them  
And knowing how to change the things you've been through  
I fear I've come to realize  
How fast life can be compromised  
Stand back to see what's going on  
I can't believe this happened to you.  
It's just a problem that we're faced with  
Am I not the only one that hates to standby  
Complication's headed first in this line  
With all these pictures running through my mind _

_Knowing endless consequences  
I feel so useless in this  
Can't patch that back and as for me, I can't believe  
Part of me, won't agree  
Cause I don't know if it's for sure  
Suddenly, suddenly  
I don't feel so insecure  
Anymore  
Everybody's got their problems  
Everybody says the same things to you  
It's just a matter how you solve them  
What else are we supposed to do…"_

The song ended and went onto _Over my Head. _He dared to go further and bring out his old drumsticks and try to mimic Steve, so he crawled all the way under his bed (seeing as how he was a scrawny and non-muscular shrimp) and looked up to the top of the bed frame. He saw the planks holding the mattress and then counted from the top of the bed to the end of it until he reached the 6th one. He stuck his fingers in between the mattress and the bar and pulled out a pair of drumsticks. The ones that traced him back to the days when he was known as Spazzy McGee.

He sighed and slid back into his room and plopped down on the bed. Staring at his sticks made him sad inside. They brought back memories of the School of Rock, his golden days as a kid on the verge of going to junior high.

Sadness, the only word he could associate with the band. Sure, at the time, it was the best thing that ever happened to him. In fact, to that point he felt he had no purpose in life. He was depressed and antsy, and he liked to literally play with fire, leading him slowly to his reputation the role of 'bad boy' which at Horace was a big and bad thing to be. Kids alienated him, even Frankie, his old best friend, who had abdicated the role as the class bully in third grade. But then Dewey came.

"Mr. S," Freddy murmured under his breath. The founder and destroyer of the band. He came and went like the winter time, or a bag of M&M's. One day he came, the next he was gone.

"Rock got no reason, rock got no rhyme…" He mused. Zack was a hell of a good song writer at the age of ten, Freddy laughed inside. "Stickittodaman…neeosis…" Freddy was howling giddily and clutching his sides at the recollection of how they actually got on the bill for the Battle of the Bands… by pretending to have some terminal, rare, blood disease.

"Freddy?" His mother called from outside his door. He sat up in a panic, grabbed his blanket, and threw it over the mess.

"Yeah????" He said innocently.

"What's so funny in there?" She was such a worry wart and a nosy mother.

Freddy rubbed his head. "Nothin, I just read something funny in a classical, old… Charles Dickens!... novel that we have to read for School!... by tomorrow," he made points to emphasize those words.

"Oh, sorry!" She called and he saw her shadow leave form under the doorway.

He sighed and uncovered the CD mountain. If his parents knew that he listened to that, they'd totally flip out and think that he was on drugs or something like that, and then would constantly watch/monitor him and would kill his lifestyle. Therefore, he had to be extra furtive around his folks… and not to mention the maid who came every week on Saturdays. It was as if they had everyone against him, just waiting for him to screw up, so they could send him away to some shrink to analyze his teenage problems.

Dewey wouldn't do that. Nope, not Dewey, not him… Freddy wiped his eyes. Was he really crying? He stood up embarrassedly and paced around the room. He stopped in front of his closet and went inside. His old childhood hideaway. Est. 1999. He used it especially during his fourth and fifth grade years, until Dewey came. Then it was forgotten behind in the sudden rush of musical fusion. But then, two months after the Battle of the Bands he basically lived in his small closet world.

And no one cared.

In fact, he came to realize that his parents didn't notice his absence at all. He'd see them solely at meals, and then he'd go straight up to his closet. But they didn't notice. He noticed, that they didn't notice, and it hurt him. The lump in the back of his throat grew, and he would sit in his closet and cry. Sad to be alone and BORED.

The haunting word of boredom. Nothing to do, but sit in the closet and cry, felling bad and sorry for himself.

But then Dewey did come, and he had a reason to, 'come out of the closet', and live happily again. But then just as quickly and suddenly as he came, he left. He left not only Freddy, but the rest of the band.

Summer dove into solitude, Tomika, Alicia, and Marta were constantly at each others' necks for vocal control, Zack went back to being shy as a mouse, Katie snapped and became the 'bad girl', and Freddy went back into the closet. They all had drifted so far apart by sixth grade, that they no longer said the briefest 'hey' as they passed in the halls.

Freddy had trouble making friends in middle school, but he noticed how the rest of the band went on to form their own little cliques, even Zack. But Freddy was the weird pyrofreak without a good soul and, not to mention bad study habits!

It wasn't until their freshman year in high school, Horace High, that him and Zack even began to acknowledge each other. Then, gradually, they were the best of friends. The rest of the band had even started to reminisce over the past every once in a while, and most of them sat next to each other at lunch, once in a while. But the magic man had brought them together once, and they still couldn't do it as well as he had all those years before.

Freddy had started to cry by that point and had curled up in a ball on the floor, head in between knees and hands firmly grasped around his legs. His cheeks were blazing red and he felt the lump in his throat forcing itself up. He gasped for air and simply lost control over his emotions. The sudden recollection of Dewey and his good life made him horribly glum and teary eyed.

He heard tires screech the road outside and then a slamming door. He perked his head up and wiped the tears away. _Zack. _The doorbell sent its ringing tone through the house.

"Freddy!" His mother called. "Zack's here!"

He sighed and shoved the closet door open, careful to make sure that no one was watching him. He crawled on all fours out into his room and shoved all the CD's back into the box, and then shoved it back under his bed. Feeling mighty courageous, he slipped the drumsticks into the back of his shirt, and then hooked the key back onto his chain necklace.

Zack knocked at the door and cautiously stepped in. "Fred?" He asked.

Freddy sighed, "Yeah." He stood up and sat on the bed, too weak to stand.

Zack walked fully into the room and then shut the door, slowly. When he turned to face his friend, Freddy noticed something strange about him. Zack Mooneyham was crying. He trudged over to the bed and sat next to Freddy. Fred sighed and slung his arm across his friend's back and let him cry.

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R&R R&R!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 


	4. chapter three

hahhahahha... another chapter of pain and misery!!!!! hahahahahaha.... its a bit shorter than the last one, but i had the urge to write, and i felt that this was enough for a chapter...

**UrS0D00rk3y:** sorry... u won't find out if she dies or not at least until two more chaps... hahahhahah.... don't worry...

**to everyone else:** thanx....

* * *

A door slammed. Freddy shot up in his bed panting. The room was still dark, as was the sky outside. He yawned and looked at his alarm clock. 6:59 AM, it read. He double checked and then looked outside again. He shrugged and lied back down. His eyes were red and droopy and his hair was all tangled and shaggy.

His alarm started to play the radio. _"Counting seconds until we can get away, ditching school almost every single day—o yeah!" _(a/n tell me the name of that song and I'll add you into my story! If you get the artist, I'll consider adding you!)

He sighed and got up, not wanting to be late to school again. He trudged wearily over to his closet and threw some clothes out onto the bed; a Thrice shirt, and a pair of baggy black cargoes. As he made his way back to his bed, he stripped his night shirt off and threw it back into the closet, soon to be followed by his boxers. He walked butt naked over to his drawers and dug around looking for a fresh pair of boxers.

None.

He groaned and cussed. "Ma!!!" He shouted angrily and ran to the door, forgetting that she would probably just waltz right in if he didn't lock the door.

No answer.

"Mother," He sighed and called again.

Still nothing.

He cussed loudly and kicked his desk chair. His mother liked to play games with him once in a while, and would search through his drawers looking for the supposed drugs that she so believed he was on (and selling). However, when she did her monthly and spontaneous (and supposedly secret) searches, she never really put anything back in the right spot. After the fifth time, he finally realized what she was doing, and would try to keep her believing that he knew, so he'd pretend to think that she just forgot to wash them.

He slumped and just put the old (and already two day old) ones on. HE felt dirty in them, and that was big step for Freddy Jones to admit that he was dirty. He never really went through great pains to try and get a short shower in every day (let alone every other day) and would leave his hair go unwashed for days at a time. People knew him to be a 'dirty, dirty boy!' and would try their best to avoid him in the halls. He found a crumpled note once in his science class and it depicted a stick figure boy (he was very thin and non-muscular) and atop the figures head was a mop of hair with stink rays floating off it. The boy was holding a naked girl in his arms (labeled: 'hooker!') and then under his feet was a few packs of Marlboros and Bud Lights. The whole picture was entitled: 'Freddy Jones is a LOOOOOZER'.

He had kept the picture and had it under his mattress with his drumsticks (which he had moved back under the bed) along with other personal things.

He continued to get dressed and then slipped his bare feet into a pair of combat boots and was satisfied. He clumped and thumped downstairs and went into the kitchen. As usual, he went to the fridge grabbed a banana and a Mug (root beer) and then went to the key hooks, expecting to find his car keys and house keys.

Gone.

He stood staring at them. "MAAA!!!" He yelled, "Where the hell are my keys?!"

No answer.

"Dammit!" He shouted and on his way out the kitchen door he turned the stove on and threw the newspaper on top of it. He then stormed from the kitchen and jogged up the stairs, occasionally skipping a few, and then barged into his parents' room, without knocking. "Ma, where'd you put my keys?!" He said while walking down the mini-hallway. "They weren't on my hook, so where'd—holy shit!" He shouted at the top of his lungs.

As Zack walked down the stairs and into the living room his pocket began to vibrate. He sighed, and answered his cell. "Hello?"

"Zack!" Freddy shouted on the other line. "Dude, come pick me up!"

Zack rubbed his eyes and then brushed his perfectly combed hair back a bit to reveal his pale forehead. "What?"

"Dude!" Freddy shouted angrily. "I'm like at third and Green near my house! Come on!"

"Freddy, school starts in half an hour, I'll be late!" Zack protested as he walked out the door and down the driveway.

"Dude, this is serious!" Freddy shrieked, and for a moment, Zack could have sworn that he heard a hint of sobbing in his friend's tone.

"Fine, stay where you are… I'll be there in like twenty minutes, just stay there," Zack said trying to calm his friend down who had lost control (again) and was sobbing freely on his end.

Zack got onto the highway and made his way down to Freddy's neighborhood.

Freddy sat down on the pavement and hid his face in between his knees, ashamed to show the outside world that the 'punk kid' was actually crying… in public.

It started to rain.

Freddy sighed and pulled his hood up. He sat waiting, for the next two hours, for his one, and only, friend to come… which he never did.

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R&R guyz... u'r sooo awesome!!!!! if i get at least 5... i'll continue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(o,,, and i'm sorry for not updating my other sor fic in a while...i'm kinda stuck,,, but will update asap!!)


	5. chapter four

**to all u guys!!! 50 reviews!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! U GUYS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**

**Amaryllic,  
The Insane Child,  
JustVisitingUKgirl,  
Desiree,  
KArthryn Merlin  
****all guess rite! the song was "Give me one Good Reason" by Blink 182... the real question is how many of u actually knew the answer, and how many looked it up on the internet??? ;-) anways, u all haveto tell me, in ur review or by email, if u want me to add u in, and if so, what name to call u!**

**also, THIS STORY IS GONNA BE VERY VAGUE AND FULL OF CLIFF HANGERS for atleast another few chaps.... so get used to it!!!!**

**OOO**

Half an hour passed and Freddy was still sitting on the pavement. His bottom was wet from the rain as was his back and head. He sighed and squirmed to get comfortable, but found it that trying to get comfortable would be a feat meant for the gods.

He grumbled and stood up, embarrassedly, and shook his hair out like a dog. He wiped his hands on his shirt and then walked down the street.

_Where's he? _He thought glumly and walked into the Starbucks at the corner. The customers didn't notice him much as he just took the seat at the counter farthest from anybody, and sat down. He buried his head in his arms and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

But no one came.

An hour later, Freddy lift his head and peered around. The place wasn't even a bit full. He and this couple of computer freaks were the only ones in there and they looked to be discussing a new computer program which downloaded things.0000000001 faster! WOW. He sighed and looked down at his watch.

_School started an hour ago! _Realization struck him. _He's not coming. _He bit his lip from crying in full view and made his way to the bathroom. Once in, he slammed the door and locked it. HE looked around frantically and then slumped down against the wall nearest the toilet.

He let go and let the tears fall freely. _Zack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! _He banged his head back on the tiles again and again until he felt dizzy. _Please!!!!!!!!!!!! Please come!!!!! Help!!!!!!!!!  
_

_**OOOO  
**_

Zack was on his way to find Freddy (a while before Freddy entered the Starbucks), when his pocket began to vibrate again. He jumped fifty feet in the air and jerked the steering wheel, in surprise. The car in the lane next to him honked and honked until Zack returned back to his own turf. He sighed and dug into his pocket and got his crazy damned phone out.

He looked down at the little thing that tells the phone number of the caller (if anyone knows the real name for it, tell me!) and read: **310 555 9029… **he didn't know that number.

He flipped the phone open and answered, ending the reign of shaking. "Hello?"

"Hello, Zackary?" Someone asked in a rushed tone on the other end.

"Yeah? Who's this?" He yawned and turned onto the freeway.

"Is Freddy there with you?"

Zack stopped in horror. "Who is it?"

"It's Mrs. Jones, is he there?"

Zack looked around, feeling pretty stupid for doing so, and then replied, "No…" He decided to leave out that he was on his way to get him.

"Do you know where he is?" She was crying at this point.

"No, is he ok?" Zack asked frantically. The thought of losing both Summer and Freddy was too much for him.

"I don't know, he left in a hurry and he threatened to--," She broke off crying.

"To what?!" He tried not to yell.

"He said he'd do something bad!" She started to sob.

Zack tried not to laugh, _typical Freddy. _"No, I bet he just went to school--." He tried to calm her down too.

"No he left his keys and everything here!" She bawled.

"Mrs. Jones, I'm sorry I don't know. I'm going to pick him up at Green and Third, if it makes you feel better…"

"Where?!" She shrieked.

"Green and Third, why is something wrong?"

She had already hung up.

He closed the phone and put it on the dashboard. _Maybe she left something important out. _That wouldn't be hard to believe. The Joneses were always trying to cover up their son's misbehavior with lies and/or vague stories.

It had really started to rain.

The phone started to vibrate again.

He groaned and reached over to answer it, but his hand knocked it onto the floor. He grumbled some curses and then groped around for it. He got it in his grip and answered it. "Hello?" He brought his gaze back onto the road ahead of him and screamed.

**OOOO**

As Billy Dotson was driving his '99 Mustang convertible to school. He turned on the news, as he always did, to be informed of the things happening in the outside world. The newscasters droned on about the war in Iraq and on terror, when he saw something horrible.

A traffic jam! Dun dun dun!!!!

He groaned and went into the right, and only, lane and drove at like five miles an hour past the accident scene. There was an ambulance and a few cop cars. In the middle of the mess was an overturned '96 Dodge Caravan and a boy sitting on a stretcher, hooked up to an oxygen tank.

Noticing, some blood, Billy turned his head away from the mess. He thought for a moment and then turned his head back to the scene once more, and noticed that it was Zack Mooneyham on the stretcher.

**OOO**

hahahahahhahahahahha (waits for thousands of angry and anxious reviewers to review!)  
-Billy is going to be a big character!!! hahahahahahhahahahahahahaha  
-if I'm nice, I might tell u who livs and who dies next chapter  
-hahahahahahhahahahahah


	6. chapter five

I just felt like writing lately, so I decided to maybe answer a few questions.... maybe... more answesr will come eventually...

* * *

Freddy passed out on the Starbucks bathroom floor at nine o clock after giving himself huge gashes across his calves. Just moments after he let his eyes close, which he had hoped would be the last time they would do that, he had a wild flashback.

FLASHBACK!

_Freddy dreams:_

_Freddy steps into his closet and closes the door. His once happy face is dark and pale at the same time.He's crying hysterically on the inside but cannot find a way to bring the tears out, the tears which kept him clean. He feels dirty for keeping them inside him, he feels he must wash the bad feelings out, before he gets too dirty to be able to clean it up. But he can't. The tears won't come._

_He sits down on a lump of old things. Clothes, toys, pictures. He picks a photo up and smiles. It is blank. _

_Blank without feelings or emotions. It's just black photo paper. He starts laughing. Laughing and laughing and laughing. He pulls a match box out from his pocket and lights one. The flame is blue, and as soon as it touches the photo, a thousand memories pop out of it and flood the closet, illuminating it with an orange glow. _

_He looks through them, like a floating magazine, and burns some with his magic blue flame. The ones of his mother. _

_He laughs each time he sees her face melt and burn away. He laughs and laughs until his sides are sore and his face melts off. But his eyes are still there, watching his mother burn. And all her words and lies and LIES and SINS burn up with her._

_Once the last memory fades, his eyes close and he is restored._

_He wakes up._

_His body is the same, his eyes, his hair, everything. But inside he is new. He feels clean and smarter. Smarter to understand what his mother was doing… a lot smarter. The old feelings of hate are stronger, as are his feelings of shame, depression, and solitude._

_He stands up and walks slowly down to the kitchen and rummages through the cupboards and drawers until he is holding a lighter (the kind with triggers and nozzles). He smiles and walks outside. He stands in his backyard and stares at the house's backside. _

_'So perfect', He thinks, 'not inside; inside are all the secrets and lies.' He pulls the trigger and watches the flame flicker in the evening wind. He walks close to the ivy wall on the left side of the mansion._

_It's early November and the ivy has long to blossom again in the spring, but it is now dead. Like he feels. Without hesitation he lights a leaf and watches the fire grow and grow and grow until the whole ivy wall is in flames. He laughs wildly and jumps into the air._

_"How you like me now?!" He shrieks at the house full of lies. Full of hate. _

_The fire reaches the wooden porch and that burns faster than the ivy. He laughs harder when he sees the kitchen door catch and at the sight of his mother, dressed in nothing more than a lingerie slip, scream._

_"How bout now?!!!" He bellows and lights the other side of the house on fire and then the dry lawn, and the trees, and the flowers, and everything beautiful. Because this is not a beautiful house; it's full of lies and hate and sins. It deserves to look like it really is… dirty._

_He screams in pain when he feels a hand slap him down. He looks up, through teary eyes, and sees him. Standing over him, beating him down again and again, wearing only his boxers. _

_He shrieks in pain, and insanity rush, and kicks his mother's secret boyfriend in the balls. The man yowls and falls back on his butt._

_Freddy scampers away from Him and farther back into the backyard. "Leave me alone!!!" He cries and runs straight into the fence. He pulls the trigger to nothing, and notices the lighter floating the pool. He wonders for a moment how it got there, but then takes no hesitation and jumps in. _

_The icy chlorine drenches his Horace Green uniform and fills his eyes, nose, and mouth. He flails around and gropes at the lighter, pulling the trigger wildly, again and again until he gives up. He wants to burn everything. BURN EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING EVIL AND SINFUL AND DIRTY AND LIES!!!!! _

_He shrieks at the top of his lungs in confusion, not sure of what else to do. He lets go of everything, his feelings, his voice, his senses and everything. He stops moving and just floats and floats until he loses consciousness._

_An hour later he wakes up in a hospital bed with his mother rubbing his hand in hers over an over again. With each stroke he feels dirtier and it gets worse each and every single time._

_He opens his eyes and pulls his hand away. _

_"Freddy, Freddy are you all right?" She says softly._

_He doesn't answer her. The strong feelings are there, just more controlled than they had been. He glares at her and then moves to a sitting position. _

_"Freddy, Joseph is gone now, it's okay." She kisses his head. "But your father and I are getting a divorce… Freddy I'm really sorry for what you had to see."_

_He doesn't answer._

_She sighs and they leave an hour later. _

_Freddy doesn't say another word until three months later, and he only said, "Bless you" to the house maid._

_By the time they reached the hotel they were staying in, Freddy's father had caught a plane leaving for Florida to live with his ex-girlfriend. Two years later they were married and another two years later, they had four kids. And Mr. Jones says no words to his ex-wife and only sends Freddy a yearly birthday present._

_Mrs. Jones married Harrison Jones one year later and they produced a set of twins by the names of Charlotte and Elle._

_As for the fire incident, it was dismissed by the community as an accident, when someone just forgot to turn the stove off. That did not stop, however, the new Joneses (Harrison and Freddy's mom) from buying the house across the street from the Hathaways._

_At school, he stopped talking to people. Frankie lost interest in him and so did everyone else. _

_Then, in the summer after fourth grade, he created his closet world._

END FLASH BACK!

Freddy wakes up from some guy in a Starbucks uniform shaking him. "Sir, sir, are you alright?"

Freddy groans and feels the sting from the gashes. He looks down and sees the blood stains on his pants. "Fuck off…" He mumbles and then stands up. "I just fell down." He trudges wearily from the coffee shop and out into the street outside.

"Hey, kid!" The guy shouts after him. "Why aren't you in school?"

Freddy shrugs and keeps walking through the rain. Two blocks down he finds an open shop door, so he walks in. Once in, he has to go down a flight of stairs and down a short hall, which is decorated with posters of rock bands. He reaches the light and sees a paradise.

A stage in the back, a bar counter to the left, a dance floor to the right and everywhere else is full of tables and chairs. _Heaven, _he muses and walks further in, towards the bar.

"Hey," The chick behind the counter says when he sits down, "You new around here?"

Freddy nods. "Can I have a beer?"

The girl nods and ducks down below and pops up with an ice cold bottle in hand. She hands it to him. He pays her a buck and drinks away at it. Once he finishes he puts it down. "It's root beer."

She laughs and throws the bottle away. "No duh, how old are you kid? Fourteen?"

He glares at her. "If I was fourteen would I be here instead of school?"

"Hey I am."

"Really?" He asks with a higher tone of interest.

She nods. "Well, I'm seventeen; I dropped out of high school last year. But I've been coming here forever."

"I'm seventeen…" Freddy says trying to spark a conversation.

"And not at school because?" She asks.

He shrugs. "Something happened."

She nods, walks around to his side and takes the seat next to him. "What's your name?"

"Freddy," he says.

"I'm Amy… **(a/n: I have no idea if amaryillc is a real name or not, so this was the closest I could get to it!**)…"

He smiles.

"So Mr. Freddy, what's the story?"

He shrugs. "Nonya…"

"What?"

"nonya business!" He laughs.

"Jeez you're so elementary!" She jokes and nudges him.

He sighs. "No seriously, it's nonya."

She shrugs. "I'll tell you if you tell me."

He considers. He just lost his trust in Zack, so it was time for him to find a new friend. A better friend. A hot goth friend who would probably relate to him more than Zack ever did. "Ok…"

* * *

the rest of u who guessed the song right have to tell me if u want to be in it or not... if u don't tell me yes or no, then i just won't add u!  
PS pleeze give me a name to call u by... it makes my life so much easier!

MArcy XD!


	7. chapter six

**k... to some reviewers:  
**Amaryllic: i'll change it eventually... :don'tcha worry! lol  
Chris (anon.): damn I'm stupid. thanx for telling em bout the call ID. I guess I was tired when I was writing. :)  
The Insane Child: i'll add u in later, if i can.  
MetallicaMad!: thanx! god that made me happy after reading what u said...  
tmrwspromise: thanx to u too for the nice comment. **no, they don't die**...

anyways, sorry for the long wait... :( here's somemore for ya... hope ya like!

* * *

"… ok…" Freddy agreed to tell her, but he was having second thoughts.

Amy looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. "I really couldn't care less if you told me or not."

He sighed and looked up from his glass and slowly moved his gaze up her body. She wore a pair of knee high combat boots, a pair of pretty beat up fishnet tights, a plaid short skirt which looked like it had once been ankle length, and a black spaghetti-strap tank top. Her hair was auburn with bright purple streaks through it and her eyes were hazel. She wore no makeup except for her black lipstick and black nail polish. She had no visible tattoos and piercings, but Freddy mused to himself of a place where they might be hiding.

He nodded and looked away.

She smiled briefly to show him that she was not sad, and then stood up.

"So what is this place?" He asked, trying to change the subject.

"Outcast society. Where teens go to fit in somewhere. Not busy now," she motioned her thin arm to the dance floor and stage which had a group of five ditchers playing guitars and laughing. "But it never really is. I think that only the truly desperate come here." She passed her gaze over his eyes and then back to the empty stage. "I was so lonely when I came here that I was shocked that people actually were talking to me. I never had anyone who dared talk to the punk girl." She laughed. "Ha! But if they could see me now!"

Freddy smiled meekly and stuttered, "What school?"

"Frances Gardens High," she grimaced at the recitation of the name. "Horace Green's partner school closer to here. Heard of it?"

Freddy chuckled at the weirdness of the coincidence. "Yeah, I go to Horace, but I used to go to Frances in like Second grade."

"I've went there up until this year. I was ditching so much, it was like I should just drop, so I miss my junior and senior year so what?! I'm smart," She mumbled the last part as if she was ashamed of thinking highly of her educational skills.

Freddy yawned and laid his head in his arms. "What do your parents think?"

She shrugged. "Wouldn't know." She said briefly and pursed her lips together.

"I know that feeling," he said glumly and gulped down the root beer. "Ya know when I was little my parents loved me--," he tried to start a happier conversation.

"I don't wanna hear about it!" she snapped angrily and threw the emptied root beer can past him. She calmed down and then walked to pick it up.

Freddy was holding his hands in front of his face, as a shield, and was afraid to come back.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

He slowly dropped his guard and then sighed. "I'll go now."

She shrugged carelessly and turned around to face the wall.

"Bye?" he said trying to get a parting word from her.

She didn't say anything, so he shook his head and started heading back to the door. When he was almost out of her sight, she called, "You'll come back, right?" There was a hint of worry in her voice as if she was scared.

He turned around with a bewildered expression painted on his face and he nodded absently. She smiled meekly and watched as he went out of sight. He walked back up the stairs and out onto the street where the rain had not even begun to get bad… it had gotten at least twenty times worse. Freddy groaned and pulled his damp hood over his head.

"Hey kid!" Someone called to him from a shop window. "Stay right there."

Freddy looked around not sure of what to say or do. When he caught the man's eye he noticed something strangely familiar about the guy. The oldie came out from the café and opened his umbrella. He showed Freddy his ID card and then put it back in his pocket, long before Freddy could catch the guy's name.

"What's your name kid?" The guy said in this strange voice. IT was soft and high pitched at the same time.

"Fred," he mumbled. He was beginning to get what was happening.

"Freddy perhaps? Jones?" The guy said and scratched his balding head under a thinning mop of pale orange hair.

Freddy sighed and stared blankly at the ground.

"K, your ditching school. I'm gonna need to take you in…" he pointed to his car at the end of the block with an bleak looking siren sitting on top of it.

"What are you? FBI?" Freddy joked sourly as he climbed in the back seat of the car.

The old guy smiled and shook his head. "No, try again."

"CSI?"

"Nope," the guy turned the car on.

"Alias?" Freddy smiled wryly.

"Freddy, you know you'll get in trouble for this right?" The guy looked at him through the mirror.

Freddy shrugged. "So?"

"Sew buttons on ice cream," the guy said and then chuckled dryly.

Freddy grunted and squirmed around in the seatbelt.

"Your mother called into the station, and I was near that area, so I went looking around. Get it?" The guy made sure Freddy was still listening.

He nodded. _Figures. She gets someone else to look for me. She couldn't care less._

"I'm a special officer. I do stuff that normal policemen don't do."

Freddy raised his brows in fake interest and made a strange _Ahh _sound.

"I never wanted to be in this business though."

Freddy wondered to himself, _He's telling me this because…?_

"I wanted to be a teacher." He nodded to himself. "Yup, a certified teacher." He laughed. "When I was your age, though, I wanted to be a rock star with my friends."

Freddy spoke up, "I don't care."

The guy sighed and stopped at the curb. "Freddy, is it that hard to see?"

Freddy looked away from the wet scene outside and into the strange grayish eyes of the driver. "See what?"

The guy laughs to himself and then says, "Or have you been hypnoticized?"

Freddy takes in a sharp breath and looks away from the mirror.

"Spazzy?" The guy says comfortingly.

He doesn't answer.

"Freddy, when I heard the sheriff reciting back the information your mother provided, I recognized your name and took on the job myself. It's me, Ned."

**O**

Zack groaned as the ambulance sped over a pothole in the road. The paramedics grabbed hold of the rails up top to steady themselves. Zack was strapped down to a stretcher with an oxygen tank keeping him alive. Next to him was a young girl whose name was a mystery to the paramedics. She had no license or form of identification in her wallet. She looked so small and young, probably an underage driver. Her face was cut by the windshield and she got a bad bump on the head which started to bleed. She was not hooked up to an oxygen tank, and was luckier than Zack.

When Zack slammed on the breaks, his car spin on the wet cement and hit the car next to him, the girl's. She started to spin too, but her car had not overturned in the action. Another car had hit them, but the driver walked away with no injuries at all. It was just Zack and this girl.

He had his left leg twisted the wrong way and his right was bleeding from multiple collisions with the glass. His hands were cut by the windows and his face was bruised.

The ambulance sped down Main Street and past Summer Hathaway's house, and then turned onto Third street and past the underground club that Freddy had been in. Finally, ten minutes after it had received the victims, it delivered them to the hospital.

They were separated and brought into surgery.

**O**

Billy Dotson parked his car in the student parking lot and ran up to the main hallway where the lockers were. He dodged many Freshmen losers and Senior bullies until he made it safely over to the Junior section of lockers. He looked around for his good friend Eleni (spelling?). Finally, he noticed her putting some lip gloss on at her locker. He smiled slyly and walked up behind her. "Frankly," he said in his 'fruity' tone (the name was given to it by Eleni herself), "I think that lip gloss is too cheap. Try buying something a bit more expensive than one dollar next time, babe."

Eleni smiled and turned around. She put her arms around Billy's neck and kissed him passionately. "Good morning, William." She teased and snipped his lower lip.

He smiled back and for a moment completely forgot about what he had just seen. "Crap! Elle, you'll never believe what I saw!"

She let go and put her hands on her hips. "What?" She leaned in closer, as did he, which is the common thing done by gossiping women.

"I was like driving, and I saw a horrid crash going the opposite way from school. I didn't really want to look, but ya know how I am! Hun, I gotta get a peak! So anyways, I was driving and the person on the stretcher was Zack!"

She looked at him puzzled. "Who?"

"Zack Mooneyham!" he said louder.

She didn't quite get it, so she turned around and closed her locker. She then unzipped her Prada handbag and slipped her lip gloss in.

"From the School of Rock? He was the guitarist!" Billy was clearly getting aggravated as one of his hands had snaked its way to his hip and his other was making hand motions to intensify his words.

"Oh, that guy. How is he?" Eleni said casually.

Billy looked like he had been thunderstruck. "Having a blonde moment are we? Well, let me know when you're out of it."

"Ohmygod! Wait a sec! Zack? Dead?!" Eleni shrieked.

A bunch of Junior heads turned to watch them. Various remarks were heard like, "Zack? Zack Mooneyham? The quite kid?!"

"Jeez, that sucks!"

"I wonder if class is cut cuz of this!"

"Hey his friend isn't here either! What's his name? Freddy?"

"More like Deady now!"

"That's nothing, I heard that the Hathaway girl, Summer?, killed herself last night!"

"Whoa seriously?"

And the conversations went on all through the day, and by the end of it, the whole school had some knowledge of the 'deaths' of Summer and Zack. There were also various rumors floating around about Freddy killing Zack and of the three of them killing themselves together. Funny how the kiddy game broken telephone is so close to real life.


	8. chapter seven

**who wants to find out y Dewey left?! I do! hahahahahhahhahahahaha**

* * *

"Shneebly?" Freddy almost shouted. "Holy shit! It's you, it's really you!" He unbuckled and jumped up in his seat. A huge grin pasted itself across his cheeks, from ear to ear, and he put one leg over the front seat, then the other and then he is sat in the passenger seat. Still beaming at the old band-adult-manager he hugged him. "Dude, I can't tell you how much I missed you…"

Ned smiled meekly and patted the weird boy on the back.

"… and everybody else—Zack misses it too, I think--," Freddy started to blabber on.

"What about Summer? Katie? Lawrence? The girls?" Ned had changed a lot from what Freddy could tell. He wasn't shy anymore, he seemed more confident, and frankly a bit more buff.

Freddy sat back against the chair and shrugged. "No one really talks anymore."

Ned made a strange face. "What? Even you and Zack?"

Freddy scowled at the saying of his ex-best friend's name.

Ned rolled his eyes. "Maybe not."

They sat silently for the next few blocks.

"So how've you been?" Ned asked to Freddy. He didn't want to know about anybody else, for once. They were not all in the car with him. Freddy was.

Freddy sighed. "Like shit."

"Well," Ned said, "that's nice."

More silence followed.

"How's," Freddy was almost whispering, "Dewey?"

Ned jerked the steering wheel in shock and then quickly straightened it out. Freddy was eyeballing him as if the old guy had had a heart attack. "Well, Freddy," he was stuttering like crazy and Freddy could barely understand his own name., "Dewey isn't quite himself lately—anymore-- I think he moved to London."

"What?" Freddy snorted. That couldn't be, it wasn't part of Freddy's plan. All he wanted to do was find the bastard and get him to patch things up with the School of Rock! And now that he'd got in touch with Ned, it was gonna be easier! Half the task was done, or so he thought. See Freddy, being the kind of laid back person he was, didn't know how hard some things were to do. He bluntly assumed that it would be a simple matter to get everyone back together, but after hearing about Dewey and England, he doubted its possibility of working. "No, he's still living with you right?" Hope was smothered through his words, and yet fear bound them together.

Ned stopped at the next available parking spot on the curb and turned to Freddy. "He left five years ago. I didn't even know he left till a couple of months ago. I don't know how he got the money or anything, but Freddy, he's not himself."

Freddy wouldn't hear of it. He was so close do breaking the ice and fulfilling something. "No!" He shrieked at Ned. "HE'S STILL HERE!"

Ned didn't look the least bit startled from the boy's outburst, but instead he looked saddened. "Freddy, he did some bad things, and got caught. He just wanted to get the hell away from everything that reminded him of what he did--."

"What did he do?!" Six years without knowing had really chipped a bit of Freddy's sanity away. The long nights at the computer trying to hunt him on the web, and yet failing each time. And those horrible trips to the jail where he'd be rejected back into the streets.

Ned sighed and turned the engine off. He looked over his shoulders to make sure no familiar cars were passing. "Freddy, remember that night like a couple months after the battle of the bands? You were in like fifth grade? Well, we all were at mine and his place and he was drinking way too much." He paused and wiped his brow. "He offered to take you home, remember?"

Freddy shook his head NO.

"You wouldn't, you got a pretty bad bump on the head." He sighed and extended his index finger to touch a place on Freddy's head. "There, right there." Freddy found the spot and was quite disappointed, inside, that he didn't get a scar to gross people out with. "You were there, you just can't remember. Your parents were on vacation around that time, so we told your nanny who didn't speak English."

Freddy shrugged. His parents never found out about it then. Not that they'dve cared.

"You guys were driving and he turned on Kroq at your request. So you were driving and talking, and having a good time. Then, a song came on, I don't know which, and Dewey didn't like it. He started yelling and cussing at the radio for playing this 'poser' song. You were getting a bit freaked out, cuz he was hitting the wheel in anger. You tried to grab his hand away from jerking the wheel again, but the next time he did it, he turned the wheel pretty damn hard. You guys spun off the road and went onto the sidewalk. When the ambulances came, you had already passed out."

Freddy gave Ned a weird look. "That's it?! He was in jail I heard for a while--!"

"He never went to jail, Freddy. He hit a pedestrian and she died. I think her name was Missy or something. But Dewey's lawyer had found evidence that she had thrown herself at the van, for a suicide attempt. Well she got what she wanted, she died. He got off with a parole or something. Once it was done, he just left."

Freddy sat silently. He remembered something. The lights, all the lights. And a horrible noise. Screaming and crying. But then there was laughing, not from Dewey or him. A shrill horrible laughter, but then it ended. More lights. Colorful red ones. Some blue and oranges too. Someone grabbed him and put him on a piece of board and wheeled him away. Dewey was yelling at them.

(FLASH BACK)

_Dewey's shrieking and yelling at them, "Bring him back! Dammit, Spazzy! Don't tell em anything! The fuzz will trick you! Don't listen!"_

_Freddy's confused. He doesn't know what he knows that they'd wanna know. He smiles to Dewey and puts his hands up shaped like bull horns. _

_Dewey smiles and waves goodbye._

(END)

Since then, Freddy or anyone else never saw him again.

Ned looked at him and started the car up again. "You testified in court, though."

"What!?" Freddy was disgusted with himself. Why would he do that?

"You were acting very strangely. Then after that, you kinda shut-up and you were dismissed. When I saw you after the hearing, you were crying. I couldn't get out of you what you were saying, but I think you were talking about you were lost. I asked you what you were talking about, but you seriously had no memory of anything that had happened. After that, I never saw you again."

Freddy shrugged. "I remember something; I'm not sure what though."

"It's ok., no one's asking you to remember."

The next few minutes they sat quietly, each staring out a separate window.

When they got to the school it was around lunch time.

Freddy looked disappointedly at Ned and started to unbuckle. "See ya round?" He said it as a question not as an empty farewell.

Ned smiled and locked the doors before Freddy got out. "Come on, I'll drive you home."

Freddy smiled and sat back in the seat. "Awesome."

Ned liked that. A kid called him awesome for once in his life and he enjoyed it. He turned the old car back onto the emptied, wet road and turned on the radio. "What station?"

Freddy sighed and reached for the 'seek' button. He flipped the channels until he came to Kroq. Ned chuckled at the boy's choice.

"So," Ned said after the song _Phoenix Ignition _finished, "what was with your ma? She sounded a bit worried that you were going to Green and Third."

Freddy laughed crazily. "How'd she guess that I was going there?!"

Ned shrugged. "Outside source?"

Freddy's laughter died. "Zack."

"I won't ask, but tell me what's the deal with Green and Third?" Ned pushed onwards.

"Why? So you can tell her?" Freddy said sourly.

"Your mother? No! I want to know, she was crying when she called--," Ned tried to explain. He was sincerely curious.

"Really? She cared that much?" Freddy whispered.

Ned looked at him and turned the radio which was playing _Chop Suey _at full blast. "What happened?"

"She never cared about me… I'm just surprised she was crying--," Freddy was astounded. For once in his life, his mother showed concern for her only son's well-being. She always looked out for the twins, Char and Elle, but never for her son.

"What happened, Freddy?" Ned sighed. It was obvious that Freddy was avoiding the truth.

"Nothing, she's just not too fond of that area." It was a lie. Ned knew it was, but he didn't want to push Freddy into telling him if he wasn't ready to tell.

"Fine," he pulled up to the boy's house. "If you need to reach me, I still live at the old place."

Freddy hopped out of the car and stood staring through the window at Ned. "She did it again. She was sleeping with another guy again, the same one I caught her with when I was in forth grade. The guy who hit me. So I ran away today and…"

"What did you do Freddy?" Ned asked worriedly.

"I set the kitchen on fire." He stood silently and solemnly.

"Yup, you're Freddy," Ned laughed.

Freddy started laughing with him, and then walked into the house.

* * *

to my reviewers: if ya wanna find out about summer, I better get at least five reviews! hahahahahha (I'm such a review junkie)!!!! cuz my next update for this ff will be about summer!!!!!!! 


	9. chapter eight

**hey its like been a while. not really! :)  
I promised I'd give some info bout summer, so ya'll get a small lil blurb! and more freddy. hehehehehehhe**

**Insane Child (sp?) glad u liked where i put u. :)  
to everyone else, thanx a bunch. who thinx i can get to a 100 reviews by the time i update next? :)

* * *

**

"…_So lost, confused again…"_ Summer sang softly. "_I feel so cheap, so used, unfaithful… Let's start over… let's start over…_"

Her arm was hooked up to an IV and she was wrapped in a hospital robe. She had been wearing an oxygen mask when she woke up, but it was making her dizzy, so she had removed of it. A bouquet of roses was resting in a blue vase on the small table at her left hand side. Above her bed, on the wall facing her was a TV.

She scanned the room for a clock. _5:37 AM 11-15-04 _it blinked on the wall next to her. A sigh escaped her lips. No shows were on this early in the morning, but she decided to channel surf anyways.

Morning news, Spanish TV, Japanese TV, Chinese TV, _where the fuck is the plain old American TV? _She laughed and continued her surf session. Soap Opera, soap, soap, Teletubies, soap, soap.

She sighed. If she wanted to keep her sanity any longer, she decided that it would be better if she watched a soap instead of the Teletubies, the mind warping, child enslaving, horrible, nightmare show! So she sadly decided to watch a soap.

Over the next few minutes the plot of the show began to unveil. From what Summer could tell, something was going on between the chubby blonde and the buff brunette guy, but the red head who was dating the buff guy didn't know, and when she found out she screamed really loud and jumped out the window. The show went to a commercial right after she leaped to her death.

Summer was breathing deeply and was grasping the sides of the bed. The cold metal rails became sweaty and moist, and she had to clutch at the bed instead. The show returned and started off at the funeral.

"Suicide…" The TV personnel droned on.

_Suicide… _echoed in her brain. She gasped in harder and harder, more painful each time, every time that word was mentioned. _Suicide… Suicide… I would've died…! _

She gasped really loudly and took on of her palms and muffled a cry. _HELP!!_

_DEAD! _Echoed louder and bounced off the walls of her brain, and started to make tears roll down her cheeks. _But I didn't die! I'm still alive! _Her brain told her. _I couldn't even kill myself right! I'm so stupid! Now everyone will know! I'm so stupid!!!! Suicide… SUICIDE!_

She shrieked at the top of her lungs and jumped from the bed. Her head felt lighter and her vision was getting blotchy. "Help!" she cried and ran out of the room. The cold plastic floor cooled her, but at the same time added to her pain. "HELP!" The IV thing got stuck in the door. She pulled at it with both her hands, harder and harder until she freed herself, and fell back against the wall, still with the IV tube hooked into her.

A nurse spotted her. "Hey!" She called and rushed over.

Summer's head was swooning and before she knew it, she was asleep once more.

**OoO**

Freddy was sound asleep in his bed. The faint patter of rain had lulled him to sleep the night before, and ironically, woke him the morning after. He groaned and shifted his position under his blankets in an attempt to get warmer. No use, it was hopeless. The house was colder because of the end of winter. It was almost spring time, and that meant that it was almost time for spring break! Hoorah!

Freddy groaned and kicked the covers up and watched them settle down back over his body the way they had been. He smiled and did it again, but when they were still up in the air, he rolled to his side to change the molding of the blanket. He felt kiddy and 'elementary'.

"Amy," he mumbled half-asleep. He knew it the moment he said something to her that he'd fall for her. It felt like a horribly clichéd romance novel for teens. He snorted at the thought of him building up weeks of courage to ask her out and then she'd accept and they'd run away and never come back. OR a worse thought: she'd laugh in his sixteen (supposed seventeen) year old face and then he'd be sad.

Sadness wasn't uncommon to him though. It dated all the way back to the early nineties when he was first conceived. A mistake! They were SAD to have this mistake. Then in his toddler years he was SAD because he felt different and was neglected warm loving feelings from his parents; only 'get down from there!', 'clean your face!', 'Frederick stop being bad!', and 'stop your fussing!'. In fourth grade he was SAD because of his mother and all the lies. In fifth grade he was SAD because Dewey left him. And the day he had been SAD because of what happened at Green and…

His thoughts trailed off and he drifted back into sleep.

A few hours later he woke up because his mother sat on the edge of his bed. He nearly jumped a mile up at the sudden pressure on his right foot, but constrained himself to a light jolt. She didn't look too startled at his surprised look.

He groaned as soon as his vision cleared and he was able to see his mother's face which was, even though it was only seven in the morning, heavily done with make up.

"Freddy," she said softly, "are you awake?"

He almost laughed her out of her sanity at that stupid question, but he bit his tired tongue and just plopped back down onto his pillow.

"Freddy?" she said again in that fake caring tone.

"What?!" he moaned. "It's Saturday!"

She was taken aback slightly. "Well I wanted to talk to you Freddy. Am I allowed to talk to my one and only son?" She painted a smile across her lips, something that looked so out of place that it would have done better on a banana.

"Talk to the twins," he muttered and turned on his side.

"They're only five, Freddy, they don't need to know what I want to talk to you about; they don't need to know anything. No one needs to know, right Freddy?" her lip quivered for a moment, and she was able to conjure a few tears.

He snorted. "Why, fraid Harry'll find out?" he said meanly.

"No," she laughed a little trying to lighten his mood, "why would Harry need to know? He's in China, right? China, all the way around the world! I miss him, Freddy, you understand right?"

"No," he spat. "I don't at all! How many times are you gonna do this to me?!"

She pleaded pathetically, "Freddy don't tell!"

"Why? You deserve it!" He shouted at the top of his lungs.

She looked scared as he threw the covers back and jumped shakily to his feet. "I hate you! HATE YOU AND YOUR GUTS! YOU WHORE!" he shrieked and through his clock across the room and against the wall where it made a beep noise and then shattered into a bunch of oblong, wired pieces.

Her eyes widened. "Freddy!"

"I don't want to hear it!" he was also beginning to tear up as well. "He doesn't deserve a whore wife! I hate you! You don't deserve him!"

All the dammed up feelings began to slowly trickle free of the barrier, and flooded his heart. All the feelings held up since fifth grade. Everything just poured out like a pitcher of water in a drought. Once it starts, it just keeps getting emptied over and over again until everyone's parched mouth is quenched.

"I hate you so much, you can't imagine! You never cared! NEVER! All you care about is YOU! The twins are lucky! They get your good side! They don't have the maid searching for drugs in their boxers--!"

"Now what are you talking about?" she asked innocently with droplets flowing down her cheeks. Crocodile tears.

"Shut up! Shut the FUCK up! I hate you! I knew you were searching my stuff since sixth grade! You never trusted me! NEVER EVER EVER!" he felt elementary again and wished he could find better words than 'never ever ever'.

The smile was pasted back across the blushed cheeks, but this time it was evil. "Why would I trust you? You burned down my house! You burned down the kitchen just this morning! Freddy, you're the stupid one, I'm sorry to say!" she was laughing. "You're simply insane!"

He stopped and turned around and faced her.

"You know what happened, you just try to forget--!" she was jeering like a playground bully.

"Well Ned said you were crying!"

"I was not! I was worried that I'd be investigated if you tried to again, Frederick!" She laughed evilly.

"You would've cared! You know you would've!" He was really crying.

She considered his statement which was more a question. "You only wish I would," she said coolly and stood up from the bed. "If you continue to use that tone with me, Frederick, I'll tell the police you burned down my kitchen."

He was sobbing as she walked casually from his room. He fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands and shrieked at the top of his lungs. So loud that certain people in China and Florida would hear. He cried louder and louder until he was sure he'd run out of air and faint. But he didn't, so he grabbed the nearest thing and threw it at the window which gave way and shattered all over the floor. But breaking things didn't give him the satisfaction that it gave an old friend of his. Katie Brown.

* * *

"Trust in my self righteous suicide, I cry when angels deserve to die, in my self righteous suicide, I cry when angels deserve to die!"

u kno the song 'Chop Suey!' ? I was totally listening to the end with that quote as i was writing the part with freddy. i absolutely love that vocal part! its so awesome!!!!!!

anyways, next chap should be about katie... if i can come up with something.

btw this is going to b pretty long in the end. what ive written so far is barely a dent into what im thinkin up


	10. chapter nine

this is a long one...  
**to my reviewers: **thanx... u guys have to remember tho, and im not joking, that if i dont get five reviews at least, that sends me the vibe that i shouldnt continue, so i dont.

**To anonomuys (spelling is obivously not rite) Mike:** dude, u know the little thing that says the sort of story its going to be? Did you see the word humor anywhere near my story? This isn't meant to be funny. btw, what's ur penname?

* * *

Katie Brown slowly opened her dark brown eyes around nine o clock. The rain was still at it and had gotten much louder since the previous night. She groaned and put her hands over her ears, but the noise still seeped through.

"Dammit," she mumbled and pulled the covers up over her head. The darkness enveloped her eyes and warmed her slightly more, but made it harder for her to breathe in. Groaning, she removed of it and stood up.

As more days passed through her, the harder it became for her to get up and make the bed. But she did it, nonetheless, even though it looked sloppy. They had a maid, as did everyone else on the block, but her parents wanted her to learn some sense of neatness. She seemed to make a mess of everything else, so she had to clean up something she could control. She could control the neatness of her bedspread and pillows, but not her problem.

The problem led her to a year of seeing a psychiatrist (who was a stupid old fart!) and an estrangement from her classmates.

Her only friend was Emily Coley, a fellow eleventh grade, and even that was saying too much. Her and Emily were close acquaintances who happened to sit next to each other and talk together. They had nothing in common. Emily liked soft rock, while Katie preferred punk, metal, and emo over all! Of course they both favored most classics, but that was the most minor of their differences. Emily was concerned of her looks and if she had a single zit on her face, she'd flip, but if Katie had _one _she'd smile relieved that she got rid of the rest of them. Emily had a very perfect family that made a point to talk to her, and Katie was stuck with her completely dysfunctional family. She'd see them once a week at most, since she got up in the morning and went to school, and would get home eat, and go to her room. It's not like they'd get home before midnight either way. Even on weekends they'd take turns going on business trips. Once she didn't see her mother for three whole months, and her father had been missing from her life for a good half a year.

Anyways, she laced her fingers together and stretched. Each finger snapped and cracked until she felt renewed and ready to face the world. Perfect timing, she muttered in her head as the echoing doorbell chimes bounced off the walls and through her room.

She looked around through the mounds of clothes and picked out a pair of cargoes with one knee missing, and a System of a Down tee. She threw those on her bed, and then shoved everything else into a hamper sort of thing in the corner of her room. While searching for a clean pair of panties and for a black bra, she shed her PJs (a pair of boxer shorts and a very tight tee) and tossed them into the basket along with her other dirty clothes. She paced around her room, when she discovered not a one pair of anything in her drawers, and looked for her undergarments.

"Dammit," she mumbled and looked under her bed. Nothing but lint and a box full of memories. She sat in defeat on her bed and peered across her small room. The smallest bedroom in the house, even smaller than the guest room, but it still was a very comfortable size. It was on the second floor, and was facing the street outside. The walls were painted a faint lilac color and the window panes were a brilliant white that seemed to glow in the sunlight. Stuff cluttered her walls and floor. She had posters, clothes, and junk in a few words. No one ever came up to her room unless it was the maid, who very often was instructed by her parents to 'let the girl clean her own room, so you can avoid it.' Since no one ever came up there she turned it into a sty, and that was her lifestyle that worked for her.

She heard people laughing casually from the hallway. The feet passed her room and went to the end of the hall. She sighed and extended her bare leg to her boom box. She pushed the PLAY button with her big toe and in an instant music filled the air.

_Like a phoenix ignition  
like a crematorium  
Like a swelling volition  
from the barrel of a gun  
From the ashes and the embers  
like a rocket I'll ascend  
Like a cry gone up for a fallen friend  
I'LL ASCEND  
Everyday tear down the walls  
till cornerstones remain  
Coming ONE STEP CLOSER ALL THE TIME  
And although we'll never reach perfection ALWAYS PERSIST TO TRY _

No regrets, just rebirth  
move forward, and ignite.  
Incandescent Reinvention  
a new renaissance  
A NEW FIRE EACH DAY

TheCD flipped through the tracks and in just moments, she was renewed and forgot that she was naked, and was dancing around banging her head and shouting into her hair brush.

Someone was knocking at her door. "Kathryn?"

She couldn't hear, she was still listening to _Thrice. _

Someone knocked louder and called her name louder, but still she could not hear. "Kathryn Brown! We're coming in, darling!" It was her mother. Not like she called her darling on a normal basis.

She turned the knob, and in that instant Katie was facing the doorway and shouted at the top of her lungs to stop, but her mother opened the door anyways. And in the split second that it took her mother to realize that her daughter was naked, a certain Freddy Jones was left to stare blankly at the naked Katie, both in shock and pleasure.

Mrs. Brown slammed the door shut in horror at the embarrassment she caused Katie. Freddy was still standing there with a blank look on his face, and _his_ mother had a casual smirk on.

Mrs. Brown gathered her self back to normality and smiled amiably. "Shall we continue?" And she led them onwards on their tour of the house as if she had done nothing.

Katie, meanwhile, was sobbing under her bed. Her hands were shaking and her head throbbing. She had to bite her lip until it bled to keep her uncontrollable feelings back. It took her a good ten minutes to calm down, and then she grabbed a blanket from her bed and shielded her bare body from hidden eyes, until she dressed. She went over to her bathroom and brushed her hair, very shakily. When she went to wash her face, she dropped the washcloth on the floor, because it was hard to hold onto it. Tears, streamed down her flaming cheeks, and she didn't dare go out there, but she wanted to. She wanted to go down there and yell at her mother so loud that everything would break into a million pieces.

"A ZILLION PIECES!" She shrieked and slammed her fist against the mirror. She gasped in horror as a dent became clearly visible in her brand new mirror (the last had been subjected to a similar death). She pressed her lips together and tried to keep herself from yelping, but in the sudden blockage of an exit, her air came out of her nose in a jolt, and brought some snot along with it. She cried and took a bar of soap and hurled it at the mirror, completing the job. Shattering each and every piece of reflection into a zillion pieces.

Crunching came next as she (without realizing it) stepped over the valley of broken glass. She trudged through her carpeted room, leaving a trail of blood to follow her. Her hand ached, and as she looked down at it, she puked into her wastebasket by her nightstand and pulled a piece of mirror from her skin. Once she calmed down, wiped up her mess, bandaged her wounds, and hid the piece of mirror in her box of memories, she took the biggest dare of her life, and opened her door.

She expected to see the whole eleventh grade laughing at her, pointing, staring, and pinching her, but no one was there but the wall. She stared at it for but a moment and took each and every step downstairs slowly and cautiously.

She heard the same casual laughter from her mother and Freddy's. Why they were there, she didn't know.

She passed the living room, where the two adults were sitting, and slipped discreetly into the kitchen. She took a deep breath and opened up a cabinet and pulled out a pan, and then a plate. In a second she had two eggs being scrambled on the stove and was buttering a biscuit. The eggs finished and she sat herself at the table. She immediately started to make an egg sandwich, but was interrupted.

"You're a bad host, I would like some too."

She jumped up from her seat and noticed that Freddy was sitting on the stool at the counter. "Jesus Christ!" She screamed and threw her plate across the room at him.

Luckily, it missed him, and just smashed through the window instead.

Freddy's eyes bulged and in a second, Katie was back, against the wall, holding her head in her eyes and cussing everything.

A moment passed before Mrs. Brown came dashing through the swinging door with a look of such embarrassment over her face. "Kathryn!" She bellowed and marched towards the scared girl hiding herself in a corner.

Freddy inched his way from the room and then ran into the main lobby of the house and waited there, on the steps.

"I'm sorry," Katie sobbed.

"That's the tenth window since school started!" Her mother shouted angrily. She sighed and straightened herself up. But then she caught a glimpse at Katie's bandaged hand, and at the blood slowly drying over it. "ANOTHER MIRROR!"

Katie sunk to the floor and hid her face in her arms.

"I think, you should start going back to Dr. Coleman's office, starting next week. Kathryn, it's not getting better." She picked up her cordless and began to dial. She waited a moment and then said, "Hello, it's Margaret Brown, Katie's' mom, she's been breaking things lately, and she's going to start coming back." She paused and started to jot some things down. "Yes I'll hold." She waited some more. "Hello, Doctor? It's Katie Brown's mother… yes, it's been getting worse… I know, she had a good little while, but lately its been getting so uncontrollable-."

"I tried!" Katie shrieked and threw her fork and knife out into the open. Nothing broke though, but the profound silence that Freddy was enjoying from his safety. "I try so HARD!" She smashed her head back against the wall, hoping to break her skull and die.

"Yes, that's her," she said unconcerned. She kept jabbering into the speaker, until Katie got desperate for attention and grabbed a butcher knife from the counter and made to slash it against her wrists.

Margaret closed the phone. "KATIE!" Her mother screamed worriedly and picked her daughter up from the floor, before she really would accomplish suicide. She, reluctantly, hugged her daughter and stroked, again reluctantly, the back of the sobbing teen's head. Once Katie calmed down, reluctantly, she took in a deep breath and hugged her mother back. The only form of affection that had been shown since she sent her a birthday card last year. "You're going there later today, alright sweetie?" She sounded awkward saying that.

Katie nodded and wiped her flooding eyes.

"Now," Mrs. Brown said softly, "I want you to calm down, and show Freddy to the guest house out back."

Katie looked at her mother in a strange way. "What?" She sniffled and wiped her nose on the stump of her wrist.

"You know that Mr. Harold Jones, his father, is a very close friend of Daddy's, so Mrs. Jones feels that taking care of him until Harold returns from China, in a month, is going to be too difficult. Especially with the twins with her. I know you'll entertain him for us, won't you darling?" She smiled angelically.

Katie couldn't believe how cliché this was. The only person she would probably ever be able to relate to, if she tried, was staying in her house (well, her guest house) and her parents wanted her to 'entertain' him. Was sex entertaining? She mused.

Her mother smiled fakely, and then removed herself from Katie's site. She stood in the kitchen unknowing of what to do. Thoughts zoomed in and out of her mind, but she got easily bored and confused by them, so she just decided to take a deep breath and walk out to where Freddy was sitting calmly on the steps with a suitcase at his feet.

"Dude," Katie said hoarsely and nudged his foot. Freddy looked up at her and then back down to his bag. He fastened his grip on the handle and followed her through the mansion, and outside. The rain pattered on the cobblestone walkway, and fed the grass, flowers, and pool. The guest house looked dark and menacing from where they stood, but Katie pulled out the key anyways and let them in.

It was a heated room, the guest room was. It had one bed, a television, and an armoire. The window's drapes were hanging loosely and the faint sound of plumbing came from the bathroom just to the left of the TV. Freddy sighed and threw his duffle blindly across the room. It hit the wall with a _thump_ and the two stood staring at it. He looked around and shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweatshirt. Then, he shook his head and let his hood fall limply around his neck. His shaggy blonde mess of hair looked grimy and greasy from where Katie stood, but that was because Freddy had not taken a shower in days.

"So," he said.

She stood silently, but to show that she was listening, and looked up at him.

He felt so uncomfortable, so he let his gaze fall back to his suitcase.

"I'm sorry," she finally whispered. "I didn't mean to throw it at you."

"But you didn't… you got the window instead," Freddy was glad he was getting some form of conversation out of her.

"I didn't mean to," she sniffled and then took another deep breath.

He felt even worse and terribly bad. "It's not your fault…" he tried to say.

"YES IT IS!" She shouted, and made to throw something, but luckily there was nothing in her reach that she could toss… and break… into a zillion pieces. She bit her already bleeding lip and looked away. "Sorry," she said shakily, and let a tear burst through. But once you let one out, you gotta let em all go. So she did, and in a minute her eyes were red and blurry, and her cheeks were wet.

Freddy looked down at her and pulled her into a hug. She cried harder at that and nuzzled her cheek into the cleft between his arm and body. He shushed her like she was an infant, but when she would not stop crying, he rested his head on top of hers. She took a breath and then lifted her arms, and squeezed him to her.

"Katie," Freddy said softly and stroked her back.

She made a noise of recognition.

"Katie, come on," he felt so uncomfortable. They hadn't spoken in person in years and here she was, crying into his chest as if he was protecting her. But she was a stranger to him! And he was to her! It was her pure need to be comforted that kept her embraced to him, and Freddy did not yet understand that.

"I—'—m so—r—r-r-y," she stuttered and then let go, and tried to back away from his hold, but he held her in.

"Come on," he said again. "If our parents don't want us around, let's go out for the day." He smiled warmly at her.

She tried to smile back, but she cried harder at his kindness. "Thank you."

He laughed and then did something he hadn't done since fifth grade. He twirled her hair on his index finger and then pulled. She giggled and wiped the snot from her nose and the tears from her eyes. They stared at each other and then hugged once more. Not as a sign of 'comfort' or affection. But as a sign of the beginning of the rebirth of their friendship.

* * *

hahhahahahahhahahahahha, its raining. 


	11. chapter ten

**sorry i havnt updated in a really long time... i was busy with personal issues and stories.  
to Amarilic (sorry if I totally screwed up the spelling to ur name there): **what does i mean?"  
**Stella Blu: **yea theres a reason... (and the reason is you! lol)  
thanx to everybody else!

* * *

Freddy sat down on the bed and waited for Katie to finish up in the bathroom, washing her eyes. He was stuck in a dilemma. Though it was so unofficial, in both cases, he was unsure whether he wanted to pursue a love life with Katie, or with Amy.

_Why not both?_ His mind teased him. _No, that's mean._

He looked towards the closed the door and smiled. The feel of his damp sweatshirt touched his skin. Both soaked with rain, and Katie's tears.

_She's not saying something… _He thought in worry. He wondered if she had issues like he did. _With fire maybe? No, Katie seemed to be more interested in smashing that plate, than in actually hitting me._

She stepped out, and he jolted his gaze up to her. She looked somewhat better and her red eyes were slowly turning back to her normal hazel. She looked down at the floor and smiled. He was so confused, and wasn't sure what she wanted. A kiss? Is that what she expected? Did she think that since he was calming her down like a baby, that they were an item? He stood up and walked over to her. Though he meant to kiss her, he just took her in his arms again.  
"Ready to go?" He asked softly.

She nodded roughly and rocked back and forth like a child.

They walked through the house passing many priceless works of art made by people with names that sounded like food. When they reached the living room, where there mothers were still talking, they were stopped.

"Where are you two going?" Mrs. Jones said in a laughing tone. She took a long manicured nail and scratched her nose.

Freddy let go of Katie's hand and said, "To lunch."

"It's ten thirty," said Margaret in her bland conversation for rich people tone.

"Brunch," Katie replied quickly.

The two women looked at each other and then at their children. Mrs. Jones spoke first, "Do you need some money?"

Freddy almost died. His mother was actually offering him cash! And this was the same mother who told him she wouldn't care if he died, just this morning! She probably was dying inside from the idea that her son would probably go buy some pot, but still she held out her pocket book to him. He nodded without hesitance and ran to collect his earnings. One hundred! He tried not to widen his eyes in shock, but they did bulge for a split second, and then he shoved it back in his pocket. "Thanks," he said absently and then went back to Katie.

"Katie, _darling, _come, here I'll give you some money too," Mrs. Brown mimicked Mrs. Jones's actions, and in an attempt to make herself look better, she gave her daughter one hundred and fifty! Katie didn't look surprised, though, as she went to get the small wad of cash. Her parents left fifty bucks on the counter for her, weekly. Their own way of showing that they 'cared'. Basically, they bribed her to stop complaining.

The mothers laughed casually, and Mrs. Brown sighed, "When do they grow up? Did I miss it?"

Mrs. Jones laughed politely.

Katie was steaming. Of course she missed it, she never was around! Not for her fifth birthday party, or for any of her graduations. She wasn't even there when Dewey brought them to the Battle of the Bands. The one who had, the day earlier, brought her to the open house at school was the maid's sister, Rosa (she was like a nanny) and she was the one who watched her play a kick ass show and who brought her a tulip as congratulations. She also was the one who listened to Katie practice and help her through her preteen troubles. Her mother merely said good morning to her once a week.

"Well, Frederick, show the nice young lady a good time," Mrs. Jones smiled evilly at her son. Though Margaret didn't notice, Katie did. "Why don't you take your car? I'll take a cab home."

Freddy nodded, and looked away.

"Oh," Mrs. Brown said urgently, "Katie, don't forget your appointment. It's at two alright dear? I'll send Rosa to pick you up, alright?"

"I'll pick her up, if you want, Mrs. Brown," Freddy said meekly.

"As long as you get picked up," she snapped towards Katie and smiled.

Katie nodded, and, like Freddy, looked away. When it became too strange for either to bear, they finished their way out the door.

The rain was pummeling down on them, and made a strange scent to fill the air. If you ever smelled a hose, it smelled like a thousand of them. The skies tore open and let a bolt shoot across the heavens as if God was playing darts and Freddy jumped.

He shuddered and searched through his pockets for his key ring. "Dammit!" He cursed and checked the other pocket.

"Freddy," Katie said gently with a smirk on her face.

"Hold, on, I think I got em…" He said while struggling with his left jean pocket.

She bit her tongue and smiled, watching him search through all of his six pockets, and then each one again. "Freddy," she smiled and moved herself up against him.

He stirred, "Yeah?"

She reached down to his belt, and jingled his keys. "Ready?" She smiled up at him.

He sighed and then pushed her from him, gently, of course. He opened up her door first and as she buckled up, he let himself in and started the engine up. She squirmed around under the seatbelt and then asked, "Can I put my foot on the seat?"

He drove from the parking-lot like driveway and then said, "Why not?"

She smiled and then let her sneakered foot slide under her left thigh. "If someone else drives me, then I get to nervous to ask. My ma said that it was rude when I was little and when she still drove me places."

Freddy nodded and turned from the richer area of the streets. At the stoplight, he reached out to the radio and turned the knob. Little green numbers flashed on the radio and Kroq blared through the speakers. She winced, and then turned it down.

"How can you listen to it that loud!" She laughed.

He shrugged and then turned it up an inch higher.

She sighed and stared out the window which was being soaked. "Freddy," she said breaking the five minute silence.

"Yeah?" He yawned and stopped at the red light.

"Can I change the channel?"

"Sure." He watched her make sure they were on Kroq and then she changed it to a station exactly 13 numbers below Kroq's station. It was on a commercial though, but she sat back in her seat, confident that she had found the right station. "What is it?" He asked.

"Listen," she said calmly.

He obeyed and as soon as the commercial ended music filled the car. And after the song ended, an even better one came on, and after that the best song in the universe came on. Freddy listened until the commercial and then said, "What station is this?"

He seemed in such awe that it made Katie giggle. "Secret!" She nudged him. "Na, I'll tell. A station where there is no talking except for between six and midnight, and it's only for ten minutes per half hour and it talks about updates in the rock world. They only play songs that can be classified as rock n roll and that have been requested. To request a song you have to call in. You can't go on the air, though." She sounded so learned. "I really think it's some kid who made a thousand mix tapes of random good songs and plays them all day long at some radio station."

"Whoa, set it for me," he said and went through the intersection.

She nodded and reached forward and set the channel.

He pulled onto the freeway and headed south. "Katie?"

"Hmm…"

He hesitated and then asked, "Why can't you drive yet?"

"Oh," she smiled as fake as his mother did, "I dunno, just never really came around to it…. I have my license though."

He squinted and then said in a rude tone, "Why the hell not?"

She looked taken aback and then looked back out the window as a sign of her disapproval of his question. "None of your fucking business."

"Sorry." He sighed.

"Freddy," she said after some time.

"Yeah?" He yawned and pulled into the parking lot.

"Thanks." She said softly.

They got out of the car and the rain immediately began to soak their clothes. Katie put her hands in her pockets, but Freddy groaned and dove back into the car. For a moment Katie assumed he was just like all the other losers at school and was afraid to get wet, but he came out with an umbrella and handed it to her. She took it, a bit confused since he had only a sweatshirt on as well, and then he pulled his hood over his mop of hair.

"What about you?" Katie said and extended the umbrella to cover him too, but he shook his head and told her he was fine. She shrugged and the two ran to the hundred yard dash times a thousand, and then were safely inside.

Freddy shook his hair out like a dog, and Katie closed up the umbrella and used it like a walking stick.

After a moment of awkwardness Freddy said, "So what to chicks do at the mall?"

Katie snorted and walked away from the doorway, causing Freddy to follow. "Chicks," she mimicked his tone, "shop at the mall."

"Really?" Freddy moaned like a child who has just been informed that he had to go with his mother to find new clothes for a wedding of some distant relation.

"Really," Katie laughed. "But Katies get food and then go to the music store and then possibly will shop around."

Freddy raised his eyebrows and then scratched his head and then his chin. "So," he said in an 'intelligent' voice, "chicks buy clothes, but Katies buy CD's and maybe clothes?"

"And then eat at Sbarros." She clarified.

He nodded and then said bluntly, "Really, that's all? Guys usually like do other stuff too."

"Such as?" She put her hands on her hips.

Freddy said meekly, "Check out the chicks at the mall, shopping."

"And not the Kaites buying CD's and pizza?"

"No, we check out _chicks_ at the mall." He stuck out his tongue and made a raspberry sound, complete with spit droplets.

She laughed and then pressed herself against him. She tilted her head up and stared him down. "That doesn't sound fun to me." She blew the words across his face. He shift his gaze but she smiled coolly and brought it back to hers. "I think that's quite rude when you're escorting _me_ to the mall."

"Like a date?" he managed to say clearly while still looking into her eyes.

She shrugged. "You tell me."

He sighed and dipped his head and kissed her softly. "Like a date." She sucked her lips in and diverted her own stare to the ground and he dipped his head down once more and brushed his mouth against her nose. He made for hers, once more, but she pushed him away and made to get him

"Stop it." She said harshly and walked a step back.

Freddy sighed and brushed the back of his neck. He had forgotten how irritable Katie was and how impatient and, basically, all her negative qualities. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

next chap will be about zack and summer probably... 


	12. chapter eleven

**Erm… yea… it's been like a looong time. Sorry. I got final fantasy tactics advance for my birthday and have been pretty busy. :)**

**Forgive me if this sux. I havn't worked on an sor in a while. I'm kinda out of it, so give me a while to get back in the groove.**

* * *

Zack woke up and immediately gagged. Something was jammed down his throat! He grabbed at it with his hands until it was out and on the floor. Almost instantly a nurse came in, just as he vomited on the floor. She rushed to his side with a syringe in one hand and some pills in the other.

"Stop!" he tried to shout, but found his voice to be missing. To compensate he waved his hands at her until she got the gist. Still, the nurse said, he had to be sedated to keep the pain down.

_Pain? _Zack thought, unawares of his location and predicament.

She took his arm and before he knew it he had fallen back asleep.

Several hours later he awoke to find it was early morning. A tray of food was sitting on the table next to him but he wasn't hungry. His head was light and one of his legs wasn't where it was supposed to be… or it wasn't there at all for the matter.

In a panic he threw back the covers and groped at his legs. He could see them, but one wasn't there. He slapped it. Nothing. Breaths coming in quickly, he felt dizzy.

He jumped to his feet, but fell over, expecting the support from two sides but it only came from one. Tears streaming down his face he began to pull himself back onto the bed.

How'd this happened?

A wheel chair was being pushed down the hall.

Was he in the hospital?

A young girl sat in it clothed in the same robes and wearing fuzzy blue slippers on her feet. Her face was calm and her arms pale. Her lips were very dark… much darker than her face and her hair was straggly. She turned her head briefly to look at him and for a brief moment their eyes interlocked and the impact of recognition threw them both into a frenzy.

Summer nearly shouted and Zack felt his arms give out and he fell back on the floor. The nurse pushing summer was stunned and was unsure of who to help first. Her immediate patient or the boy lying on the floor.

"Zack!" Summer said and took the wheels into her hands and drove herself into the small room he was in.

"Summer! You're alive!" he was in such a state of euphoria that he began to crawl towards her and when they reached each other they clung together for what seemed to be an eternity.

* * *

yeah short short i kno... but im really supposed to be studying for a world current and a ap euro test for tomoro.

hope i havn;t lost you all since last may... please review... if i get a bunch i might continue!


	13. chapter twelve

**Not quite sure where to start from. Life's been hectic. Finals , final fantasy, Third Age, finals, finals, finals, final, Inverloch, Forced Alliance, finals, Red String, Mega Tokyo, finals, finals, finals **

**xXPunk AngelsXx: **thanx  
**Carly (Anon.) **I love that song so much, and was listening when I put in that chapter (the one with boxcar racer) glad u liked that part!  
**Kathy Merlin: **hola mellonin:)  
**SpikesDreamer: **I read ur review and was wondering myself where I'd left Lawrence. So I decided to give him a part. Thanx for reminding me.

**PS my recent obsession with manga/webcomix is the basis of Lawrence. :)******

PSS Giveth me a break. I haven't really sat down and wrote something good in a very long time. And I would very much apricaite reviews and such. It's nice to know you're not completely invisible

**Onwards men, onwards!

* * *

"Welcome to Comics N More," ((a.n. yes, real original, I know)) , "if I seem uninterested, fear not, I'm merely making sure that these are suitable to purchase," an Asian boy somewhere in his teenage years (you could tell from all the zits and oddness to his voice). In his hands was a copy of _Love Hina Vol. 9 _and lying on the counter were volumes 1-8.**

"Got the new BECK yet?" the customer said while standing in the doorway shifiting his weight from one foot to another.

"Not till March," he said and put the book down on the counter and picked up another.

"Chobits 7?"

"Every volume but seven and two."

"Damn… Love Hina 3?" he said in a desperate tone.

The clerk thought for a moment, shuffled through the scattered books, and brought out the treasure. "10 bucks."

A broad grin came to the boy's face and he came up and paid.

"Have a nice day, and a pleasant tomorrow," the clerk said and then picked up a rubber band which he twirled around on his index finger. After a moment it spun out of control and out into the open air. Annoyed, the clerk went to pick it up and then sat back down to resume his reading.

"Yo," a girl said while fiddling with her jacket zipper. Cute yet wet, she looked to be the same age as the clerk. Her blonde hair was stringy and pulled up in an attempt of pigtail buns. Being too short, it was more like a pair of ponytails. "I'm going in the back to change, k larry?" Her clothes were soaked, and her shoes were spouting out water with each step.

"What happened?" he laughed, looking up from the book.

The subject obviously made her touchy, for she sounded very uptight while she said, "I swear, the people in the city have no common courtesy! If they see someone walking on the sidewalk, drive slower, or something! No need to speed up and get a little girl all soaked!" She slung the jacket over her arm and then looked down at her tee. Sopping, wet… and light blue.

Larry grinned sheepishly and looked back down and continued to read. "I think we have a Chi dress in the back."

"Can't I wear one of those defective shirts we got in last week?" She said while making her way to the backroom, and putting her bag down on a chair behind the counter.

"I think we have a Chi dress in the back." He repeated and turned the page.

"I'm just going to go to Forever 21 and buy a shirt and pants, ok?" she took a fifty and a ten from the cash register and then put in three twenties.

"I think we have a Chi dress in the back." He laughed.

She paused in the door and then came back. "I bet you'd like that wouldn't you," she said and hit the back of his head. "You sound like a broken record, and I'm not putting that thing on."

He smiled. And hugged her, "Come on, I'll dress up too."

"Yeah right," she scoffed and dropped her jacket onto his head.

Awkward silence while watching people walk past the small store in the mall. No one ever came in there, or at least hardly ever. The only reason the store was in business was because all the employees bought the merchandise rather than customers. It really was a very profitless establishment, though. The owner had left in the hands of his niece when he died, and she'd turned it into what it was today. She was an irresponsible girl and eventually she only could pay for a smaller store, so the whole place was moved from a store the size of a McDonalds to a basement sized hole in the wall... with a backroom of course! But it's hard to blame only her. The employees weren't the best and would most often just sit around reading Manga or playing video games. "We're testing them," is what they'd call it. There were three in the store at any given moment. There were twelve people on staff and seven of them worked weekdays, and eight worked both weekdays and ends.

"You know," he said and tossed the jacket at her and then pulled her close to whisper in her ear, "You're shirt is see through…" he pat her back. "Nice bra."

She blushed and then nudged his cheek. "Is Kitty in today?"

"Randomness, Glynn, I thought we were going to work on that!" he looked startled at her question.

"Is she?" she questioned.

"Yeah." He rummaged through his breast pocket and pulled out a walkie talkie. "Kitty where are you?" he said into the mouthpiece.

A beep and then static. It made a noise and then she answered in a very distorted voice. "I'm at the airport." Beep.

Glynn giggled and sat down on Larry's lap.

He spoke, "Seriously…" beep.

Static and then, "In the parking lot. I'll be up in a minute." Beep. "I forgot my undies in the car and had an accident." Beep.

They laughed.

"I just didn't feel I should leave you alone while I went," she said after he'd put the walkie talkie on its charger. She shrugged and ran her fingers through his scraggily hair. "I like the orangey tips."

"I like yours too."

"I don't die my hair," she said confused and sat herself on his lap, face to face.

"Well, your umm… how shall I say this… breasts have some pretty point tips right now…" he said trying to keep a straight face.

"Lawrence!" she shouted.

"I told you to change," he said in his defense.

"That's not very nice!" She said and started pinching his face.

"But I told you--ow!-- to change!" he laughed and started swatting her hands away.

Suddenly a very shlumpy looking boy came in and started looking around.

"Can I help you?" Lawrence said, pushing Glynn from his line of vision.

"We, can we help you!" She giggled and blew a raspberry on his hand until he let her go at which point she jumped up and walked towards the new comer.

He didn't look very sociable, and he averted his eyes to anything and everything but theirs when he spoke, "I'm looking for Pokemon merch." He kept his eyes on a poster of a very scantily dressed character on the wall.

"Well," Glynn said and took the boy to an area to the left of the store and started talking to him.

Lawrence was left alone at the counter, so he picked up the book and continued to read.

_How'd I get like this_? He asked himself, staring blankly at the page. He'd gone from classical to rock to manga. He'd had a dorky appearance and slight accent as a kid but here he was looking good as ever with an Americanified accent with traces of his old one still scattered about. He tried to remember how he got like this, but all he could think of was his sister. She loved manga and was always reading it no matter how much their parents forbade her. Eventually, after reading everything in their house, he'd rummaged through her book case and was hooked. Like a junkie he couldn't stop. He'd go to the bookstore every weekend, grab a series of a manga and read. Then he'd get another, and another. And when he'd finished he flew some in from Japan. He could understand them, so why not?

And this was better than rock had ever been for him.

Sure the band was fun for the few months it lasted and the guys were great, but still. This was better. He loved this and he chose it on his own. The band had been forced on him, in a way, and had made it all the less fun in the last few weeks of its existence.

The breakup was hard on him, but not as hard as anyone else. He changed schools for middle school and then was home schooled by a very odd tutor and then he reached the age of high school.

By that time his parents had divorced and his mother had moved back to Japan. He was left with his sister, who was nineteen, and a very angry father. When he could take no more of it, he left for Japan, as well, and left Lawrence in his sister's care, since she was legally an adult. It really was an abrupt thing. Suddenly he had to fend for himself in the world. For high school he went to the public one by their apartment and hung with people who were just as obsessed with manga as he. That's how he met Glynn.

The bestest friend he'd ever had. She'd known him for his entire high school career and was the one who'd first talked to him on his first day of 'real school'. The summer before their sophomore year she'd got the job at Comics N More and put in a good word for Lawrence who was hired only days later. The store was a baby then, hardly a month old.

"I wonder where everyone else is," he mumbled and picked up another book.

Glynn was still showing the blonde guy around and every moment he wasn't watching her she looked down to make sure her 'tips' weren't as visible anymore. _I knew I should have worn that other bra,_ she laughed to herself.

"Lawrence," she called and came over to him, with the boy carrying a large Pikcahu and a smaller Charizard behind her. "Weren't these on sale?"

He looked and then nodded. "Yeah."

oooooooo

Freddy was awestruck. He'd found the coolest present for Katie in the whole world… a giant pikachu!

* * *

I had fun with this chapter for some reason and have the other half saved and ready to go... well not really. but still.

**if you can tell me what comic Chi is from I'll put ur name in somewhere, if u want. If you know put it in ur reveiw with a name u'd like me to use.**

peace out!


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